Survivor of ‘72 attack on Olympic Games shares story

Sunday

Mar 30, 2014 at 7:57 PMMar 30, 2014 at 7:57 PM

About 100 people came to the Riverfront Museum Park on Sunday afternoon to listen to champion fencer Dan Alon of Tel Aviv tell his harrowing tale of survival. In 1972, Alon was a 27-year-old member of the group sent to Munich to represent Israeli at the Summer Olympics. Eleven members of the delegation, including Alon’s coach and good friend, Andre Sptizer, would die in Germany at the hands of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. Alon and three other athletes hid in their apartment and fled shortly after the terrorists stormed their building in the Olympic Village, killing a wrestling coach and a weightlifter and taking nine hostages. The hostages would die later that day during a gunfight between the terrorists and German authorities at a nearby airport. Alon is 69. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and three children.